The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 364: Deliver Us from Evil (2024)

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

Toward the end of the Lord’s Prayer, we implore God to protect us from temptation and from the evil one. Fr. Mike clarifies what we mean when we ask God not to “lead us into temptation” and emphasizes the importance of discerning between trials and temptations. Lastly, we review the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, known as the final doxology. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2846-2856. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

I'm Father Mark Mary Ames with the Franciscan Friars The Renewal. My brothers and sisters at the service of becoming saints and falling in love with Jesus and Mary and the Most Holy Rosary, the team here at Ascension Press have put together the Rosary in a Year podcast. Each day we're gonna have a 10 to 15 minute episode where we're just gonna work through the basics of the rosary. Who is Jesus? How do we encounter Jesus? Who is Our Lady? What does it mean for us to be in relationship to her? We're going to go through the Hail Mary, the Our Father, each of the different mysteries. And then we're going to bring in some Saint writings on the mysteries and some sacred art that speaks on the mysteries and all of this to help enrich our prayer, to renew our prayer, to help us fall in love with Jesus and Mary and to fall in love with the Rosary again. If you want to join us on this journey, you can begin by going to assentgenpress.com

forward slash rosaryinayear to download the prayer plan and by listening and praying with us through the Rosary in a Year podcast. All right, look forward to the journey with you. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home.

This is day 364, we're reading paragraphs 2846 to 2856. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism at the Catholic Church. You can also download your Catechism into your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y for next year, I guess, maybe. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and Daily notifications today is day

364 if you do have the reading plan, you know, and you maybe have the catechism right in front of you And you realize wait a second. We're reading 28 46 28 56. So we're going through three things We're gonna look at the last two petitions as well as the doxology We're looking at and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And then also the doxology is for the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours now and forever. And then the last day tomorrow, we're gonna do the nuggets.

And I would say, isn't it the most appropriate thing in the world to have day 365 just be nugget day, totally fitting. But today we get to go through these last petitions and lead us not into temptation. One of the things people always think is like, wait a second, am I asking God not to tempt me? Great question, camper.

Answer is no, we're gonna get into that. Also deliver us from evil. We recognize that with the battle between, not flesh and blood, but principalities and powers, we are asking the Lord to deliver us from evil and then we give him praise at the very end. This for the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever.

You guys, let's jump into this. Let's dive into these three aspects on this day 364. Just we'll pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Father in heaven, we give you praise in this moment, at this day, at this hour, right now. May you be praised. Lord God, you have put us in this world and you've made us for this world, but you've made us also for the next world. You've made us in such a way that you've destined us to

have eternal life with you. And yet in this world there are many slings and arrows. In this world there are so many forces that are trying to keep us from the heavenly homeland, the home, the dwelling that you have prepared for us. There are so many forces internally and externally. Lord God, even in our own broken hearts and in this broken world. There are so many battles, so many trials, so many tests, and so much evil that can get in our way, that can stumble us, may cause us to stumble, that can be obstacles for us. And Lord God, we ask you please, please help us, help us through the snares of this world, this valley of tears, Lord God, this exile, help us with your grace. Lord, I know you already do, but please fight for us. Continue to

fight for us. Fight for us now and always. Never let us go. Never let us go and help us to never let you go. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It's day 364. We're reading paragraphs 2846 to 2856. And lead us not into temptation. This petition goes to the root of the preceding one. For our sins result from our consenting to temptation. We therefore ask our Father not to lead us into temptation. It is difficult to translate the Greek verb used by a single English word. The Greek means both, do not allow us to enter into temptation,

and do not let us yield to temptation. God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself tempts no one. On the contrary, He wants to set us free from evil. We ask Him not to allow us to take the way that leads to sin. We are engaged in the battle between flesh and spirit. This petition implores the spirit of discernment and strength. The Holy Spirit makes us discern between trials, which are necessary for the growth of the inner man, and temptation, which leads to sin and death.

We must also discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation. Finally, discernment unmasks the lie of temptation whose object appears to be good, a delight to the eyes, and desirable, when in reality its fruit is death. Origin stated, God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings. There is a certain usefulness to temptation. No one but God knows what our soul has received from Him, not even we ourselves. But temptation reveals it in order to teach us to know ourselves. And in this way we discover our evil inclinations and are obliged to give thanks for the goods

that temptation has revealed to us. Lead us not into temptation implies a decision of the heart. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No one can serve two masters. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. In this ascent to the Holy Spirit, the Father gives us strength. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape so that you may be able to endure it. Such a battle and such a victory become possible only through prayer. It is by His prayer that Jesus vanquishes the tempter both at the outset of his public mission and in the ultimate struggle of his agony. In this

petition to our Heavenly Father, Christ unites us to his battle and his agony. He urges us to vigilance of the heart in communion with his own. Vigilance is custody of the heart, and Jesus prayed for us to the Father, keep them in your name. The Holy Spirit constantly seeks to awaken us to keep watch. Finally, this petition takes on all its dramatic meaning in relation to the last temptation of our earthly battle. It asks for final perseverance. Lo, I'm coming like a thief. Blessed is he who is awake. But deliver us from evil. The last petition to our Father is also included in Jesus' prayer. I am not asking you to

take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. It touches each of us personally, but it is always we who pray, in communion with the whole Church, for the deliverance of the whole human family. The Lord's Prayer continually opens us to the range of God's economy of salvation. Our interdependence in the drama of sin and death is turned into solidarity in the body of Christ, the communion of saints. In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the evil one, the angel who opposes God.

The devil, Diabolos, is the one who throws himself across God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ. A murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies. Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. Through him, sin and death entered the world, and by his definitive defeat all creation will be freed from the corruption of sin and death. Now, we know that anyone born of God does not sin, but he who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one. St. Ambrose wrote, The Lord who has taken away

your sin and pardoned your faults also protects you and keeps you from the wiles of your adversary the devil, so that the enemy who is accustomed to leading into sin may not surprise you. One who entrusts himself to God does not dread the devil. If God is for us, who is against us? Victory over the prince of this world was won once for all at the hour when Jesus freely gave himself up to death to give us his life. This is the judgment of this world, and the Prince of this world is cast out. He pursued the woman, but had no hold on her. The New Eve, full of grace of the Holy Spirit, is

preserved from sin and the corruption of death, the immaculate conception and the assumption of the Most Holy Mother of God, Mary, ever Virgin. Then the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring. Therefore, the Spirit and the Church pray, Come, Lord Jesus, since His coming will deliver us from the evil one. When we ask to be delivered from the evil one, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which He is the Author or Instigator.

In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity, She implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return. By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of faith the gathering together of everyone and everything in Him who has the keys of death and Hades, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. In the Roman Missal we pray,

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil. Graciously grant peace in our days, that by the help of your mercy we may always be free from sin and safe from all distress as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ. Article 4. The Final Doxology. The Final Doxology, for the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever, takes up again by inclusion the first three petitions to our Father, the glorification

of His name, the coming of His reign, and the power of His saving will. But these prayers are now proclaimed as adoration and thanksgiving as in the liturgy of heaven. The ruler of this world has mendaciously attributed to himself the three titles of kingship, power, and glory. Christ the Lord restores them to his Father and our Father, until he hands over the kingdom to him when the mystery of salvation will be brought to its completion and God will be all in all. St. Cyril of Jerusalem stated, Then, after the prayer is over, you say, amen, which means so be it. Thus ratifying with our amen what is contained in the prayer that God has taught us.

All right, there we have it, paragraphs 2846 to 2856. Again, just let's use the word beautiful, powerful. I just can't get enough here. So let's go back to the beginning 28, 46 lead us not into temptation. Let's highlight this. This is one of those kinds of things that can be confusing at some point. You're like, wait a second. Does God tempt? Remember scripture makes it absolutely clear in the letter of James chapter one,

verse 13, that God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. That's letter of James chapter one. That's very important for us to understand. God does not tempt us. We never can say God is tempting me because he never does this. What does that word, what does that phrase really mean? It doesn't mean to lead us into temptation. A better translation would be do not allow us to enter into temptation or do not let us yield to temptation. So again we're not going to change the words because we've been given the Lord's prayer in whatever our language is for a long time, but you know now, you know that when you pray,

lead us not into temptation, you're praying something more along the lines of do not allow us to enter into temptation or do not let us yield to temptation. So that's so important. So what is the petition asking for? It implores the spirit of discernment and strength. The spirit of discernment and strength. So paragraph 2847 highlights this. The Holy Spirit makes us discern between a couple things. Discern between trials and temptations. And this is very important because yes,

trials are necessary for the growth of the inner man, right? Trials are necessary that we need to be tested. If we're not tested, we don't have trials, we can't grow. We know that this is true when it comes to biological life. It's also true when it comes to our spiritual lives, that we have to face some kind of opposition in order to grow. This is the way muscles grow, right?

This is the way that your brain gets to learn things. It has to be challenged, and in that challenge, your brain becomes smarter, right? You become smarter. If your muscles aren't challenged, they become weaker. But when they're challenged, the trials, we become stronger. So trials are necessary for our growth. Temptation is different. It says the Holy Spirit makes us discern between trials, which are necessary, and temptation, which leads to sin and death.

So we have to discern between those things. We also have to discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation because sometimes there are intrusive thoughts, like invasive thoughts that come into a person's mind. We know these. You didn't ask for those thoughts. You don't want them, but there they are. The right response would be to ask for God's help to banish them or to help you distract yourself from them. Those thoughts are only temptations.

But since you did not entertain them or consent to them, there's no sin. Instead, there's victory. I mean, really, there's victory over that temptation because those thoughts were resisted with God's help. Now, if someone does consent to them or does entertain those thoughts, then yes, that would be sinning. But just having the thought pop into someone's head is not sinning So we recognize that being tempted to a sin is not the same thing as consenting to sin So we have to discern between those things and hopefully you have some wise people in your life who were able to say, okay

No, no, no, I hear what you're saying. You did not consent to that. You were simply tempted to that sin. So discernment between trials and temptation and discernment between being tempted and consenting to temptation. Finally, discernment unmasks the lie of temptation. The lie of temptation is that this is good. The reality is we know that sin leads to death. How often do we maybe justify our sin to ourselves

because we think, well, yeah, but how could this possibly be bad? I mean, think about the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. Here is Eve, Eve looks at the fruit. Yeah, it is the light to the eyes, the power of forgetting wisdom. There seems to be nothing wrong with it. The only wrong thing with it is God said, don't eat it.

And yet it brought death. It looked fine, but its fruit is death. And so we need that discernment to be able to discern past the lie, to unmask the lie of temptation. That's always going to present itself as something that we want but we know, we know, ultimately we don't want this. And I love this quote from Origen. He says, God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings. There's a certain usefulness to temptation. And then that is true.

Temptation reveals our soul. Temptation reveals our soul in order to teach us to know ourselves. And in this way, we discover our evil inclinations. And then we're obliged to give thanks for the goods that temptation has revealed to us. It's so good. It goes on to say in 2848

There's a decision of the heart here lead us not into temptation implies a decision of the heart that we We limp right we're free, but we limp we have strength But not all strength and so what we need to do is we need to assent to the Holy Spirit and the Father gives us strength. If we assent to the Holy Spirit, the Father gives us strength. Remember, we said we need both discernment and strength. And we need to assent to the Holy Spirit, consent to the Holy Spirit, to surrender to the Lord and the Father gives us strength.

I love this quote. It's one of my favorite, well, it's one of the many great quotes from 1 Corinthians chapter 10, where St. Paul's writing to the Corinthians and he says No testing has overtaken you that is not common to man That's really important for us to know Sometimes we have such a perspective on our temptations like on the things that were afflicted by that We might be tempted in addition to the temptation to have what they might call like exceptionalism Like exception all ism would be well in my case, I'm the exception.

That I know that God's calling everyone to whatever the thing is. But here, I have this particular wound, I have this particular temptation, I have this particular thing in my life that I'm the exception to this whole thing. And here's St. Paul saying, oh yeah, yeah, here's the deal.

No testing is overtaking you, that's not common to man. Yeah, you might have a particular kind of testing but it is not You're not the exception basically. I think what st paul is saying here You're not the exception but he goes on to give some encouragement not just the uh, Smack upside the head of listen, you're not the exception but here's the encouragement God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength But with the temptation will also provide the way of escape so that you may be able to endure it." So we realize, we realize we need discernment and strength. And of course, 28-49 reminds us that that battle and that victory are possible only through prayer,

only through prayer. And so just keep in mind, we have to have that prayer. And one of the things we pray for in this Lead Us not into temptation is the last line of 28-49. It says, finally this petition takes on all its dramatic meaning in relation to the last temptation of our earthly battle. It asks for final perseverance. If there's something that I invite every one of us to pray for on a regular basis, maybe a daily basis, maybe every morning and every evening, is for the grace of final perseverance.

That grace of like, okay, Lord, I'm right now, I belong to you, right now I'm saying yes to you. God, please give me the grace to say yes to you with my last breath. Please give me the grace for final perseverance. The last temptation of our earthly battle. We don't know what that's going to be. None of us know what that's going to look like or it's going to be. All we know is that it's going to happen. And the Lord God wants to be part of it. He wants to be there to give us discernment and strength in that moment. So we just pray for that.

I invite every one of us pray for final perseverance. And if you're like, how do I pray for that specifically? Well, maybe when you're praying the Lord's prayer, maybe just when you're praying the our father, realize when we pray together, lead us not into temptation, put that note of, and even at the last hour, the last temptation of my earthly battle, give me that final perseverance. That would be something so good to pray for, because you know it's coming, and we know

God wants to be part of it. He wants to give us the strength to escape. Now, the last petition, deliver us from evil. Now, paragraph 28-51 highlights this reality. In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the evil one, the angel who opposes God. When we pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Yes, I want to be delivered from the temptation to evil.

I want to be delivered from committing evil. But we are praying in this petition to be delivered from committing evil. But we are praying in this petition to be delivered from the evil one. It is not a temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. We are talking about the devil, who we know is real. He is not an abstract kind of evil, but is a person. And it goes on to say, the devil, Diabolos, is the one who throws himself across God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ. And I think it's helpful in paragraph 2852 to hear what scripture has to say, what Jesus has to say, about the evil one.

He is a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies. Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. And we recognize that if that's the case, then I cannot fight the devil. I cannot fight the devil on my own. And neither can you. None of us can. He is smarter than us. He's more powerful than us. We're not called to fight the devil on our own. Every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, we're asking God, please fight him for me. God, please fight for me.

We're praying every single time. Deliver us from evil. Deliver us from the evil one. God, come and fight for us. Now, victory, paragraph 2853, victory over the prince of this world, right? Victory over the evil one was won once for all at the hour when Jesus freely gave himself up to death and gave us his life. This is the judgment of the world. The prince of the world is cast out.

He pursued the woman, this is Revelation chapter 12. He pursued the woman but had no hold on her. The new Eve, full of grace, our lady, he pursued her but had no hold on her. Therefore, because of that, the Spirit and the Church pray, Come Lord Jesus, since His coming, our Lord Jesus Christ's coming, will deliver us from the evil one. Now, yes, we talk about deliver us from the evil one. The paragraph 2854 highlights the fact that when we ask to be delivered from the evil one, we are also praying as well to be freed from all evils, past, present, and future,

of which he is the author or instigator. And so, in this last petition, the Church brings before God all the distress of the world. This is it. All of the suffering, all of the evil in this world, what you're doing every time we pray and we pray this together, we're bringing all that evil, all that suffering, that overwhelm humanity, and we're begging God for this, as it says here, precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance, there it is again, perseverance, in expectation of Christ's return. And I love this last sentence, it's just, it's crazy.

By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of faith, the gathering together of everyone and everything in him who has the keys of death and Hades, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." There's such a confident prayer. The Our Father is. That's why we say we dare to say it is a bold prayer. Not because we're bold about ourselves, not because we're confident in ourselves. It's the exact opposite. It's because God in His love for us has made us his adopted sons and daughters. He is our father And he wants us to come to him as father Trusting him with everything

In his last petition Okay, father. I trust you even with the evil of the world Overwhelmed by the evils of this world Father I entrust you with the evil one that you're going to fight him. You've already had victory over him. You're going to continue to battle him in his role in my life. But also, I pray that you deliver the whole world from the evils that afflict the whole world. He's incredible.

Incredible. And then of course, the final doxology that for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever, we just give God glory, we give Him praise. Remember, Judah goes up first, praise goes up first, and in the end, praise goes up last. We continue to praise God at all times, and we pray at all times. Please pray for each other. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless.